A wide variety of vehicles are known, commonly used as a conveyance for the transportation of people or objects. Some illustrative but not exhaustive examples include passenger automobiles, trucks, rail cars, all-terrain vehicles (ATV's), mobile homes and campers. Some vehicles and associated systems are sophisticated, complex and expensive, requiring a substantial commitment of funds for purchase and maintenance, and may command high prices for rental or lease to third parties or resale to subsequent purchasers, and may also retain substantial residual value at the end of a rental or lease term.
Vehicles may be exposed to a wide variety of damaging environmental exposures and extreme operating conditions, which due to actual or potential damage may diminish the value of a vehicle to subsequent purchasers or violate owner/operator lease or rental agreements. For example, a rental car company lease agreement may forbid off-road use of a rented sport utility vehicle (SUV), in order to prevent use in rivers and stream beds otherwise enabled by the capabilities of the vehicle, and which may damage or diminish the value of the SUV. Yet determining the actual environmental exposure or operating condition history of a given vehicle is not generally possible through routine physical inspection of the vehicle: for example, washing a rented SUV before return may conceal an off-road use.
Of particular concern are vehicle submersion events. When a vehicle is partially or totally immersed in water, such as through encounters with floodwaters or entry into rivers, lakes and other bodies of water, the vehicle may experience direct system failures or damage; and also indirect or potential damage only evident much later, such as rust, mildew and molding damage. Problems arise when an operator or other responsible party chooses to conceal knowledge of an immersion event from a current or prospective owner or operator of the vehicle. For example, many passenger cars located in the states of Louisiana and Mississippi in the U.S.A. were submerged in floodwaters caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and salvaged by owners and insurance companies as total losses; some of these salvaged vehicles were sold to subsequent purchasers unaware of their floodwater submersion at normal un-salvaged market pricing, the flooding information intentionally withheld in order to inflate the value of the vehicle and defraud the purchasers. It also known for vehicle owner/operators to falsely claim immersion events in order to receive insurance proceeds for the alleged associated damage or even fully liquidate the value of the vehicle, thus exposing insurance companies to losses through fraudulent claims. And submersion of a leased vehicle may dramatically reduce the true market residual value of the vehicle upon expiration of the lease, yet the leasing company or a subsequent purchaser may be defrauded into placing a higher market value on the vehicle by withholding notice of the submersion event.
Prior art methods for determining whether or not a vehicle has been immersed or flooded generally rely upon visual inspection and verification techniques. Such techniques require an adequately trained inspector to physically inspect a vehicle and detect or verify a flooding event, and thus a commensurate expenditure of assets for the requisite training and employment thereof. Even then, discovering or verifying a flooding event may be very difficult even for expert inspectors. Moreover, some events may only be evident after application of invasive techniques that necessitate damage to the vehicle, for example by cutting open or removing seat coverings to inspect underlying materials. Some evidence may fade, diminish or disappear over time, along with the practical ability to detect or verify the flooding event, even as rust, mildew and/or mold damage is slowly progressing toward a later manifestation. And evidence of a submersion event may be intentionally obstructed of removed from the vehicle in order to actively conceal the submersion event.